1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to managing customer information within a database, and more particularly to ensuring that most or substantially all customer accounts are correctly linked to appropriate customer information within a customer database. The present invention further relates to ensuring that most or substantially all unique customers are not erroneously identified as two or more customers, but are instead correctly identified as being a single unique customer.
2. Related Art
Customers often have more than one account established through a business, especially with a service-oriented business such as a financial services company or an insurance business. In the case of the financial services industry, for example, a single customer may have any combination of a personal bank account, a mortgage, a line of credit (such as a home equity line of credit), a personal credit card, a business credit card, a rewards account, and one or more investment accounts with a single financial institution. In the insurance business, a single customer may have any combination of health insurance, auto insurance, home owners insurance, and other kinds of insurance protection as well. Even with non-service businesses, a single customer may have multiple accounts. For example, a single customer may have one account with a computer supply company for home purchases and another account with the same company for small business purchases.
It is important for a company to recognize that all of the customer's accounts belong to a single customer and to link those accounts, in order to appropriately market to the customer without overloading the customer. In addition, each customer may have preferences with respect to their privacy, and with respect to a variety of matters related to the management of their accounts. It is important for effective business-customer relations that these customer preferences be respected in relation to all accounts associated with the customer.
Further, ensuring that all accounts for a given customer are, in fact, accurately associated with that customer is vital for businesses which offer decision-support to their customers, as is the case, to name just one example, with a financial service business that provides portfolio and asset management. The correct linking of accounts with a customer can improve the accuracy of the financial company's estimate of the financial status of the customer.
In practice, accurately linking accounts with a single customer proves to be a non-trivial undertaking. It is possible to associate one or more accounts with a single customer based on unique customer identifying information, such as the customer name, social security number, date of birth, address, and other distinctive or unique identifiers. However, the association process is fallible. For example, sometimes some information is not collected; if a customer's business is applying for a credit card, for example, then a tax ID number may be collected rather than the customer's social security number.
It is also possible that variations may creep into the way a customer's name is recorded, or the way the address is recorded, or simply that errors are made during the process of collecting customer identifying data. People change addresses over time, or change their name, which can thwart efforts to make account associations based on the name, address, or other time-variant identification data. There are other factors as well which can contribute to a failure to correctly identify that two or more distinct accounts are actually associated with a single customer.
Still another factor which makes it difficult to effectively recognize which accounts are, in fact, associated with a single customer is the size of many businesses. A large service business, such as a large financial institution, may have multiple business units. Often, these business units do not efficiently or effectively share information, since in some cases data processing may be distributed over multiple computer systems and software systems. As a result customer information can be fragmented over these multiple data processing systems and their associated databases.
It is also possible that accounts can be incorrectly linked, i.e., that accounts which actually belong to two separate customers become associated, within the business database, with a single customer. This can happen through various errors in data association or the data association process, and can also occur as a result of deliberate fraud by third-parties, e.g., identity theft.
Still, it is essential that the linking of customer accounts be accurate, so that accounts from two different customers are not incorrectly linked and/or that accounts belonging to the same customer are not left unlinked.
Given the foregoing, what is needed is a method, system, and computer program product for linking customer information. In particular, what is needed is a method, system, and computer program product that provides a substantially complete and accurate view of product relationships for prospects and customers across all lines of business, products and services, no matter how large the company or business may be, and no matter how diverse the product lines or service lines. The method, system, and computer program product should ensure that there is no redundancy in customer identification, i.e., that one single, unique customer is not erroneously viewed within the company database system or systems as being multiple customers. What is further needed is a method, system, and computer program product to ensure that all customer accounts are correctly linked to the appropriate customers who own the accounts, without any erroneous linkages.